Teenagers, persuade your parents to buy this lawnmower and you can get your weekend afternoons back. The LawnBott seems to have some competition.

The Auto Mower from Husqvarna eliminates noise, hassle and is environmentally more friendly than your average gas-powered lawnmower.

Husqvarna Auto Mower

It works similarly to the Roomba robot vacuum in that it self-charges at a docking station, navigates on its own and can be set to run on schedule. You shallowly bury a boundary wire around the general perimeter of your lawn and any gardens to let the machine know its limits. It can handle inclines, rain and simply reverses itself when it bumps into things like trees.

While the $2,000 sticker might present some shock, compare it with the fuel costs your average $200 to $400 mower sucks up or the fees of a landscaping service. The Auto Mower runs on a rechargeable nickel metal hydride battery that can mow for about four to six hours between charges.

Since it's quiet, you can set the Auto Mower to run at night. In fact, the company says it only needs to be set up once at the beginning of the season and then can be left on its own to mow and charge. Safety sensors stop the blades--which only spin while the machine is in motion--when the machine is lifted off the ground.

But the Auto Mower isn't yet widely available. Only a few stores in the U.S. currently sell it, and one of them is a computer store.

About the author

In a software-driven world, it's easy to forget about the nuts and bolts. Whether it's cars, robots, personal gadgetry or industrial machines, Candace Lombardi examines the moving parts that keep our world rotating. A journalist who divides her time between the United States and the United Kingdom, Lombardi has written about technology for the sites of The New York Times, CNET, USA Today, MSN, ZDNet, Silicon.com, and GameSpot. She is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not a current employee of CNET.
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